Speakers

Neil is a Chicago transplant working as a podcast producer as well as a teacher’s assistant and design mentor with Designation. He loves the design research process, talking to users, then bringing back ideas to them for testing.

Alissa is Director of Design at Tempus. Her work has always been driven my impact—currently it’s cancer, but before it was progressive politics, K12 educational technologies, and non-profit marketing.

Don Bora has been a professional software developer in Chicago since 1990. In his career, Don has started 6 companies two of which he sold and two of which are still alive and making a lot of noise.

Jason Kunesh finds simple solutions for gnarly problems wherever people meet technology.

Danielle is CIO and Commissioner of the Department of Innovation and Technology. Most recently Danielle was the City’s Chief Technology Officer, leading efforts to leverage data and technology to make government more effective, efficient, and innovative.

Jon is a Interactive Design Lead at Vectorform, where he invents digital products and experiences. His passion lies in exploring the intersection of design and development, and often merges these two disciplines into a hybrid approach for solving digital problems.

Garrett Polifka is a User Experience Team Lead with fifteen years experience in the creative industry; ranging from marketing to front-end development as well as software design.

Julie Morycz is a Senior Designer at Grand Studio where she focuses on visual/UI design and digital UX. She is an adaptive, inquisitive designer, and is passionate about creating human-centered solutions to common problems… with a side interest in all the crime shows.

Diana Deibel is a Lead Designer at Grand Studio in Chicago, a multidisciplinary product design consultancy where she focuses on VUI design, UX strategy and research. Her favorite work combines behavior theory, dialogue writing, and creating a useful, enjoyable experience – while hopefully avoiding breaking any UX laws.

Brian has 15+ years of experience across all design disciplines from a wide range of industries including supply-chain, data science, and internet infrastructure.